Gore no more

My review of Al Gore's book and movie An Inconvenient Truth was published in the Sunday Business Post.  It was fun to write, as you can probably tell.  I enjoyed the feedback as well. 

Comments

[Suzanne Brennan]

Hi Peter

I work for the conferencing partner of the Sunday Business Post, iQuest. I'm currently working on a two day conference programme on Alternative Energy which is focused very much on finance, infrastruture and policy. I'd like to send more details to you email address (attachements etc), but I can't find it on this site. Would you mind sending me it as I would also very much like to invite you to participate in the programme.

Thanks in advance.
Suzanne Brennan
iQuest
T: 00 353 87 9191292

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

The feedback was amusing as it was pathetic. Envirofascism is pretty much a religion for some...how sad.

[Tom]

I just read your piece on the film 'An Inconvenient Truth'. One paragraph, in particular, has me shaking my head:

"One of the important roles of the Senate, and not the president or the House of Representatives, is approving or rejecting treaties, like the Kyoto Protocol on global warming."

WTF? You are obviously implying that Gore and H Clinton are responsible for the US backing out of Kyoto. This is absurd. For someone purporting to be interested in facts, you certainly are playing fast and loose with them.

[Ryano]

I note you haven't been back to the thread on politics.ie to engage further with some of the feedback on your review.

In particular, I'd be interested to hear your response to my comments on your selective quoting of Emmanuel.

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?t=14015

[Peter Nolan]

Sure, can I respond in another four months?

[Peter Nolan]

My response to the letters in the Sunday Business Post was not printed, but I put it in the politics.ie thread at the time.

http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?p=461142#461142

[Peter Nolan]

The source of my funding is hardly mysterious. The only person who pays me for writing this or any other article in the SBP is the editor.

Writing for newspapers on such a specialist subject is not a very lucrative proposition. Either you get a lunatic living in a wigwam somewhere in deepest Leitrim to do it. Alternatively, somebody who makes their living elsewhere can donate their time in a spirit of public service as I do.

Of course, the other advantage is that my income and my life generally are independent of what anybody in the media, in politics or in the energy business thinks of my opinions, which gives me the independence that I'm looking for.

[Peter Nolan]

"Little attention was paid to facts or science, bar a few choice and misleading quotes. Apparently Gore was useless, and we have little to fear from global warming."

At the risk of appearing sarcastic, I refer Mr Enright back to my article, in which I write of "the most serious environmental crisis of our time, global warming." I'm puzzled as to how he comes to paraphrase this as "...we have little to fear from global warming".

[Peter Nolan]

"Yet, vested interests want us to subsidise nuclear energy which is even more expensive than the foreign gas and oil Nolan wants us to import."

I refer Mr Enright to the Royal Academy of Engineering report on costing alternative sources of power, which again shows wind as uncompetitive on cost grounds. If he can explain where the RAE, which as an academic body has no particular interest one way or the other, are going wrong, I would be fascinated to learn from him.

This picture of the relative costs is consistent with private data shared with me in confidence by staff of the large generators in Britain.

I've not been able to find the cost estimates that he says are "easily available" on the CER website.

[Peter Nolan]

"I wonder, by the way, if his authoritative source on the science of global warming (a 2001 report of the UN climate panel) might be a bit out of date.

As an ordinary concerned observer of what is happening, I am under the impression that a lot has been learnt about climate change since 2001."

Eh, yes. This week saw the publication of the first of the Summary for Policymakers of the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC. This gives lower ranges for the maximum temperatures and, crucially, reduces the forecasts of possible sea level rise, as well as downplaying the risk of a meltdown of Antartica's ice, none of which are consistent with the film.

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

[Peter Nolan]

In the case of Gavin Harte of An Taisce, I'd point out that his organisation has already done far more to make Ireland unhabitable than the projected effects of climate change will.

[Peter Nolan]

I'd have to agree with Cadogan Enright that Arthur Morgan of Sinn Fein might also be considered an expert in the field, given the IRA's extensive involvement in cross-border energy trading.

Deputy Eamon Ryan's contributions to the debate on energy seem to consist of repeating some of the soundbytes of Dr Colin Campbell.

I have written elsewhere of why I disagree with Dr Campbell, but the key that the Greens miss is that, as I try to emphasise again and again, that the high oil prices at that time, reaching $80 over the summer of 2006, could not be predicted to continue. Any planning exercise that doesn't take into account the inherently cyclical nature of oil prices and the huge unpredictability of their future course is doomed to either irrelevance, or has repeatedly been the case in Ireland, of saddling the country with expensive white elephants tended by parasitic lobby groups.

I predicted a fall in the oil price at around this time, as has now occured.

http://www.theglobalguru.com/article.php?id=43&offer=SEO001

Dr Campbell's predictions of a 2005 oil peak in his Oireachtas testimony have not materialised.

Who's looking like the real expert now?

[Peter Nolan]

"Nolan suggests that the scientific evidence regarding the ‘‘peak oil’’ theory is weak."

In a discussion with Dr Jeremy Leggitt, another author in the peak oil camp in London recently, he conceded that the theory was "a minority view". In writing on this, unlike on climate change, the views of environmentalists such as Deputy Ryan are in complete opposition to that of the scientific consensus.

"Most environmentalists I know learned to add and subtract at an early age, and little more is required to understand the basic principle at stake here. "

I'd prefer Mr O'Driscoll give me credit for researching a wider range of opinion than he seems to be familiar with. Sarcasm is not only the lowest form of wit, but also of debate.

I can only ask him - subtract from what? Dr Campbell's estimate of one and a half trillion barells? Prof Peter Odell's estimate of ten times that amount? The IEA's 5.5 trillion barells? And what reason does he offer for ignoring all the other forecasts in favour of Dr Campbell's?